Picture Perfect Potter
by angelsammi
Summary: They all loved him. But he couldn't love anybody. COMPLETED


He heard girls giggling when he passed them and kept his face as straight as possible. Giggling should definitely be illegal, he thought to himself as he passed a particularly loud group of girls. They always stopped when he was right near them but they'd start again when he was past him making him feel that much more ridiculous.  
  
He knew girls liked him. He had no idea about the boys.  
  
Somewhere in Gryffindor Tower there was a small but impressive looking "Harry Potter" shrine, which was comprised mostly of photographs. If Harry knew about it, he'd die from embarrassment.  
  
Collin Creevey was always taking Harry's picture; whether Harry wanted it taken or not, was an entirely different story. One particularly gloomy rainy day, Collin was piecing together a scrapbook of his favorite photo's of Harry when opportunity struck. Harry, left behind yet again by his friends Ron and Hermione, sat with that irresistible gloomy face of his looking at the common room fire instead of doing his homework. Ron and Hermione were probably off snogging in a prefect bathroom as usual, leaving Harry with no one to talk to and no one to play chess with.  
  
*flash*  
  
Another photo. A profile shot. Collin knew this would be a beauty. Harry scowled, but Collin happy with his latest shot...ran off to the potions hallway to develop what would probably be his best portrait ever of Harry Potter.  
  
Collin developed the photograph in a cauldron in the empty classroom. He knew Snape wasn't going to be done with lunch anytime soon. He had been watching Snape for years, he knew his habits just as well as he knew his own.  
  
He used his wand to dry the photo instantly and there in front of him, was the best wizard photo taken of Harry EVER! Harry, close up, firelight reflecting off the glasses but the side view showed the intense green of his eyes. That precious green so normally hidden by that protective layer of glass, glimmered. Harry's image blinked, the jet-black fringe of his lashes was beautiful. The skin, the lips, and his peaches and cream complexion ... it was gorgeous. Collin fought back a squeal of delight.  
  
*snatch*  
  
Collin's sharp intake of breath was almost like a mini scream. He whipped around to see Draco Malfoy holding his precious photograph. Malfoy! Of all people, holding HIS photograph of Harry!  
  
"Give it back!" Collin demanded.  
  
"No. I don't think I will. I think YOU have enough pictures of Potter. What are you in love with him? You stalk him enough. No. I think you should go now Collin, before I tell Professor Snape you were using his classroom for such ... amusements," Malfoy's voice was as sinister and mocking as ever.  
  
Collin saved the negative, vowing to remake the photograph as soon as he could and left the potions classroom crestfallen. He'd lost the photograph. It was PERFECT, almost as perfect as Harry himself. Collin didn't see through his tears of frustration that Malfoy had pocketed the photograph.  
  
As fate would have it, or maybe it wasn't fate but Collin's dumb luck. Maybe he'd sat too close to Neville Longbottom during lunch too many times. It just didn't seem to be his week. He'd tried to reprint the photograph of Harry once again and once again it was taken from him. Seamus Finnigan.  
  
"Ah I see you've been bothering Harry again, give that here. Now don't bother him again!"  
  
Collin hid in various spots of the castle, each time trying to get one print of the beautiful fire lit Harry Potter. Harry at his gloomiest, his most romantic face, the face that confirmed everything that was ever said about Harry's greatness. It was all right there in the photograph.  
  
*SNATCH*  
  
Damn Ernie MacMillion ... Justin Finch-Fletchley actually tried to get the negative as well as the photograph... that stupid Slytherin Vincent Crabbe... not to mention two second years who wrestled Collin to the floor ...biting him in their attempt to force the photograph out of his hand. Out of the sake of not mangling it, Collin let it go.  
  
By the end of the week, Collin was sure there were at least 100 copies of that photograph; and he didn't have even ONE copy of for himself. Collin was depressed.  
  
Collin sat in his customary chair, camera on his lap, waiting. Harry came down for breakfast and walked by a gaggle of giggling girls. Harry's head was low. He looked extremely sleepy.  
  
"HI, HARRY!" Collin called after him.  
  
Harry waved; "Collin," he said groggily, barely acknowledging the enthusiastic boy. Harry didn't stop to talk to him, he just kept walking. Harry always just kept walking, sometimes he walked faster, sometimes he turned and walked the other way. He always would. Collin's face flickered with a smile of brief excitement scratched down "ONE" on his memo pad. He looked at the day before, yesterday he'd said "Hi, Harry!" twenty seven times.  
  
Harry plodded the stones of Hogwarts for years. He never noticed anyone. He'd noticed Cho until she cried on him and then he secretly wondered how to get away from her. Kissing her had been a mistake. He never asked another girl to a dance, he never got friendly with anyone. Even the papers wanted to know: "What side of the broomstick does Potter fly on?" It was of no consequence though, Harry was untouchable. He had his walls firmly up and no one got past a certain point.  
  
The inevitable happened eventually. Harry graduated, fought and defeated Voldemort and then moved away to some remote island - alone, to spend the rest of his days in peace from reporters and photographers. Or so they said.  
  
No one knew Harry had actually bought a small house in a remote area of Scotland. They didn't know that he watched over Hogwarts daily through a telescope, thinking of the days he walked there, wishing it'd been different for him, that he had the ability to walk those stones without a care in the world.  
  
Harry didn't know that there were tons of boys and girls, that were now men and women, who had never given up their crushes on Harry Potter. Collin being one of them. He opened a small shop in Diagon Alley and sold posters and copies of his scrapbooks. He was a self made millionaire thanks to his obsession over the reluctant hero named Harry Potter, but Collin would have traded it all in for just one kiss from the boy who lived.  
  
Gossip had always been an enemy to Potter. Wild stories ran wild like blazing fires by witches and wizards that they'd gone to Harry's remote island and had nights of incredible sex and sold their stories to the wizarding wireless. His legend was more exciting than ever to those who dared to utter the dark-headed young man's name. The famous young man who read muggle novels and went fishing for his supper. The unknown Potter who watched over the castle and who never showed his face in town was dressed in rags. His shoes had long fallen off his feet in total disrepair, his face as thin as ever, his owl his only companion, Harry lived as a hermit. He had tons of gold collecting dust in his family vault but he didn't need it. He just wanted to be left alone.  
  
They held their ten-year reunion at the Three Broomsticks. The owl that had been sent to deliver Harry's invitation had never came back. No one expected him to be there. Draco Malfoy was actually shaking Ronald Weasley's hand giving a compliment when a thin wreck of a wizard entered the pub. The vagrant sat at the bar and ordered a butterbeer. Rosemerta told him to try the OTHER bar since they'll serve anyone but the dirty wizard waved a battered silver coin proving he could pay for his drink. She served him but with a look of distaste on her face that only made the bum laugh.  
  
"Have you heard the latest about Harry?" was the gossip as usual. Nothing had changed. Made up wild stories circulated and the shoeless one at the bar just laughed behind a matted mass of unruly black hair.  
  
Draco Malfoy sat down next to the ragged wizard "Hey, buddy, you look pretty down on your luck so how about if you let me buy you some dinner?"  
  
The ragged one nodded and laughed.  
  
Draco raised his hand and ordered a plate of pot roast and potatoes for the derelict.  
  
As the odd little man ate, Draco sighed and surveyed the room. "I had hoped someone would have been here."  
  
"Who?" gruffed the wizard between bites of the free meal. Draco's eyes were sympathetic. The poor man was inhaling his food, as if he hadn't eaten properly in a very long time.  
  
"Harry Potter," Draco admitted, ordering a second plate for the wizard and a bottle of butterbeer.  
  
"Oh him." The butterbeer bottle was drained and the second plate of food was practically half gone though it'd been served just moments before. "Why?" the bum asked.  
  
"I wanted to tell him something..." Draco said softly.  
  
"What?" The bum asked.  
  
"Sorry?" Draco asked curiously.  
  
"Well, for some reason you're buying me food and talking to me so you might was well get what ever it was you wanted to say to HIM to me cause well you can't afford to keep buying me food and I won't listen when the plate is empty." The fork was working quickly.  
  
Draco laughed. He pulled out the picture of Harry that he had taken from Collin all those years ago and laid it on the bar. "Just wanted to give this to him," Draco sighed.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I loved to hate him... then I hated to hate him when I found out that I loved him," Draco said sadly.  
  
The bum grinned. "You ... like..." he laughed.  
  
Draco blushed. "Well, I didn't expect you to understand"  
  
"Nope, don't reckon I do." The vagrant stood and bowed to Draco, patting Draco's hand awkwardly leaving a smudge of dirt behind. "Thanks."  
  
The raggedy wizard left, but only after he walked around the room squinting at various people. Most shied away from him. A few actually told him to go away. He laughed and then he cried. Draco watched him limp out of the Three Broomsticks, the filthy figure pulled something out of his torn robes and disappeared.  
  
Ron ran over to the window. "Who was that?" he'd only seen the shadow of the wizard through the frost-covered window before it vanished as it put on the cloak. Ron turned to look at Draco who was lifting the plates on the bar looking for his photograph of Harry. It was gone.  
  
"A bum," Draco said looking on the floor for the photograph. His mouth fell open in wild thoughts. "No, it couldn't have been..."  
  
"A bum with an invisibility cloak?" Ron's voice was highly pitched. "That was..." He ran out on the street calling out Harry's name.  
  
Harry stood twenty feet from his friend, invisible under his faithful cloak. His feet were numb from the cold. The coat of mud on his skin did nothing to warm him. The fleabites on his calves were itchy. He wanted to die but he didn't have the privilege of that decision. Harry turned and walked away while Draco joined Ron in the fruitless search.  
  
"You might have hated to love me, Draco..." Harry said quietly so no one would hear, his own voice so unused that it was crackly the way Sirius's had been when he escaped from Azkaban. "They all might have loved me. But I couldn't love anyone... I'm sorry." And with a stomach properly full for the first time in years, he trotted back to his little shabby shack.  
  
The end 


End file.
